January in the flatlands

Here we are already halfway through January and I haven't posted anything about the start of the year or what's been happening. Well, briefly, not a lot!

I can sum up the year's events so far in three sentences: I've finished writing my travelogue and it's now out with Beta readers as my aim is to publish it next month as a Kindle book; teaching work has started, but very slowly so we (that's Koos and I) are filling in my gaps by redecorating the crumbly cottage; we've been for lots of lovely walks and most notably our traditional New Year's trek across the beach.

This year we went to Cadzand in Zeeuws Vlaanderen, so my traditional photos with dogs and people frolicking on the sands are below.

 And these next photos are from our walks around the crumbly cottage when the sun has shone. As they say on the weather forecast, sunny intervals, and as intervals have gone, they've been just about long enough for a brisk 4kms and then it's been a case of diving inside before the sleet and hail has hit again.

My aims for the coming months are a bit more extensive: I want to finish the South African novel I started about a year ago and which was interrupted by all sorts of other commitments. I still have no real idea where it's going, but I keep writing in the hopes that a pattern and a good story will emerge from the jumble of half formed plans that I keep mentally sifting through. I then want to start on my WWII novel.

In the meantime, we have to prepare our Hennie H for going to Poland. That is the big plan for this year, and we hope to spend about four months travelling. I'm both very excited and rather nervous about it as not being the youngest of couples, I don't want to go anywhere too far from civilisation in case something happens to either of us. We will need to plan our route very carefully.

In between all this, I would like to go to Italy and to the UK again to see friends, although these are likely to be long weekends if they happen. However, I am definitely going to Spain for a weekend in two weeks, but more on that later. Last but not least, I have to finish renovating my back cabin on the Vereeniging, but I'll wait until it's just a bit warmer to do that!